While Taylor has been enjoying the Tegra 2 powered LG Optimus 2X, I have been treated to a little surprise of my own. This afternoon, the FedEx guy dropped off a package from HTC. Since AT&T finally unveiled their launch details for the HTC Inspire 4G just yesterday, it’s was fairly easy to assume what was inside the package.

I’ve only had about an hour to play around with the HTC Inspire 4G, but it’s fairly safe to say that it’s certainly the best HTC handset I have used in a while (the HTC Thunderbolt doesn’t count since Verizon has not yet sent me one to test out). Now that AT&T has lost it’s exclusivity deal with Apple’s iPhone, it’s clear that they will be stepping up their Android offerings over the next few months in an effort to retain customers.

Over the past year, AT&T has received a lot of bad press over how they have managed their Android phones. One hottest issues has been AT&T’s lock-down on application installation. As of now, all phones available on AT&T are only able to install applications from the official Android Market. Fortunately, I’m happy to report that the HTC Inspire 4G is the first phone on AT&T that allows users to install applications from the SD card and other sources. I’m not 100% sure if this feature will carry over once the phone goes on sale, but the phone I have in my hands certainly has no issues with the apps I installed from Gmail and my memory card.

I’ll be playing around with the HTC Inspire 4G for at least two weeks, so be sure to check back in for a full review in about a week.

Gallery